Arcturian Space Monkey or UNNAMED
by Korok
Summary: Set within the H2G2 universe and hopefully with a simmilar writing style our three protagonists play out events independant to the original, yet somehow entwined.
1. Chapter 1

**U N N A M E D**

**1**

M.

Ziggy had always thought that it should really be a big D instead.

He thought it was sociological, lexicological (as far as glossology could be logical) and tautological non-sense. Had the world gone mad? Could the world not see that it should really be a big D instead?

He rubbed his eyes and decided he needed some strong coffee and a good breakfast. Or maybe just something strongly analgetic, like the initial effects of a well calculated blow to the head. Ziggy waited in the queue for any one of these things.

The reasons it was all that non-sense, he thought, were these:

Socially speaking, Mc has always classically been the prefix of a surname and not strictly part of the actual recognised naming of families. It does however recognise the nationality or lineage of the given family or individual. Classically, it relates to Ireland or Scotland and not, as is normally protested, concerning a ghastly mix up between Raymond Albert Kroc, Dick, Mac and a Multimixer milkshake maker. It was simply a prefix, nothing more.

Speaking from the point of view of a librarian, secretary or those crazy guys that wrote the dictionary, quite simply, you wouldn't allocate McCarthy, McDougall and McKesson all under 'M.' Or would you? He wasn't acquainted with anybody who could logically sort things out beyond the level of advanced university student, so Ziggy wasn't too sure about the validity of this point. Advanced university students being the ones that can't organise anything not to do with a lot of drinking, dancing, getting up late with a headache, not getting up, and drinking. Also, he couldn't remember the last time he used a real dictionary since computers did everything except actually write your thesis for you.

And tautologically the Mc in front of every single item and the need to include the use of this prefix every time you wanted the guy in the box to understand your order annoyed the hell out of Ziggy.

Fred Turner has a lot of explaining to do, he thought. Ziggy still waited, sat hunched over the steering wheel. He felt the car roll slightly even with the brakes applied fully.

Damn.

He'd have to get the brakes checked again. He was beginning to suspect that the guys at the garage had syphoned his brake fluid, probably some fuel, and nicked the spare change left in the glove box. He'd apply the hand-brake if he hadn't lost it someplace.

Ziggy's car was a calculated retort to all those who told him that shocking pink just wasn't his colour. But from his point of view, if the King could look good in a 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood, then so could he. Assuming, of course, that Ziggy in fact owned a 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood. If he did, and was in it now, then it would be a complete lie to say that he was in a McDonalds drive through waiting to be served. Even if he took off the wing mirrors and a fair bit of the paint job in manoeuvring it through, he'd probably still get it completely stuck and Fred Turner would lose a lot of business. No, he'd have to do with something that didn't hog one and a half lanes of British motorway, or one and a half Olympic sized swimming pools worth of diesel, and it would have to be affordable. Like a Golf Gti. Assuming, laughingly, that Ziggy even had the money to buy a pink Golf Gti. He had in fact bought a sickly green Mk2 Golf Gti that no one else wanted to go near, this 'no one else' had a weak stomach you see, and sprayed it pink to prove his waning point. Interestingly enough, at this very moment an oddly familiar man was playing oddly familiar songs to the clientele of The Domain of the King Bar & Grill, on the other side of the galaxy.

Ziggy needed something quick, a McDonald's coffee or a blow to the head, and he didn't mind which. It was all the same to him. He needed to wake up swiftly in order not make a fool of himself during his audition which was in… he checked his fancy hybrid digital/analogue watch… fifteen minutes ago. He needed to hurry.

He got all tense at the wheel as if he was about to slam his foot into the accelerator a nanosecond after something, anything, went green or scared the crap out of him in his moment of absurdity.

'Good morning!' vented the man in the box, which was by now next to Ziggy's opened window.

Several things happened at this moment. The air tentatively carried the not-yet-quite-broken-but-getting-there nasal shrieking of the man in the box in the form of vibrations. Even the vibrations didn't quite like their lot in life and for a fleeting moment considered mass suicide. Fortunately, for them at least, they dissipated in Ziggy's ears. His ears, who really couldn't be bothered at this hour, passed it onto the brain to see what it could make of it. Unfortunately, the pensive state in which his brain was in just prior to this malarkey made it panic and shoot the garbled message off into the spinal cord who immediately thought, 'oh how nice, its been a long time since the doctor checked for unconditioned reflexes with his cute little hammer.'

Fortunately the car in front had just left when the resulting 'knee-jerk' reaction caused the tyres to squeal, the car to accelerate like a half price handbag out of a Selfridges sale, and nearly not hit a two-inch tall new born cherry tree planted ceremoniously by a blind child the previous day for a McDonalds' charity event.

Funnily enough, one of the few things going through the mind of the man in the box was bewilderment as to why that was the fifth guy to do that this morning. Also, the last thought radiating from the cherry tree at the moment of its demise was, 'this exact thing happened to me the other day you know.' If we knew why, or even how, the cherry tree had thought this, then we would know so much more about the universe we call home.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

He was almost, but not quite, like anything anyone from Earth had ever seen. If any old layman had seen him, they would have thought they'd seen hundreds before and had thrown peanuts at one the other day. Layman didn't have much of a clue. However, a person who had studied, or were familiar with, primates for a living would have been flummoxed. They would gibber in bewildered bullishness and, to make sure, consult a barrage of textbooks in the hope that they had just discovered a new species. Fred, however, couldn't care less.

Frjj Edrquell is an Arcturian Space Monkey, known to his friends as Fred. Arcturian Space Monkeys are a smart lot but they can't pronounce Frjj Edrquell. Back on the planet of Arcturia they were one of two highly developed species, although the other liked to think it was far higher up the proverbial 'evolutionary ladder' than anyone else. While Fred's species enjoyed clambering around trees eating fruits and Arcturian Ultra Bananas the other species endeavoured to work at building tools, eventually developing agriculture, weapons, villages, war, governments, cities, space flight, and other such silly notions. If an Earthly zoologist found about any of this he or she would have had a field day with theories of parallel evolution, planetary environments and the dispelling of the 'little green men' notion. Soon most individuals from Fred's brethren species got depressed about all this boring work, threw down their hyper spanners and ripped off their digital/analogue hybrid watches, and went back to playing in the trees. At this point the whole of Fred's species used the opportunity to thank the other species, to the other species' great surprise, and left the planet to meet other space fairing cultures in the hope that they would be a little more interesting. It was like first building the proverbial 'ladder' from bamboo, climbing it all the way to the top to get at those ultra bananas and finding that some foundling gyte had already pinched them.

Fred relaxed cushioned in his specially adapted power chair; the chair being like the petals of a bizarrely coloured lotus that moulded themselves around his body. He was so comfortable he didn't feel as if he was travelling at several billion miles an hour. He'd done a little interior decorating recently. If he had to do what he was doing and had to do it by living in his ship travelling the galaxy then, he thought, he would do it with some style. Others would have said it looked bland, minimalist, baroque (1) if you will, but Fred thought it was homely. The trees contrasted especially well with the excitingly luminescent fruit shaped console panels. And the psychedelic shag-pile carpeting was a personal touch.

What Fred did for a living, or rather to pass the time, might at first seem peculiar. But there is a sane (2) reason for it. Arcturian Space Monkeys didn't advance much further since they left Arcturia, except in interior decorating. They didn't feel as if they had the need to develop technology or culture anymore since every day was a breeze. They had reached a technological pinnacle in which every need, every whim, and every Arcturian Ultra Banana Sundae was catered for. So, as not to suffer the same fate as their brethren species they all did wondrous feats around the galaxy to keep them preoccupied and had them recorded in the 'Guinness Book of Pan Galactic Records and Other Such Stupid Stuff'. Arcturian Space Monkeys are famed for achieving a whole 2 of the records held in the book.

The book was actually virtual in order to store the information and could have been accessed at any time from anywhere for the small fee of being blasted away by adverts. The Guinness company had in fact tried to manufacture real books as publicity stunts but every attempt to make a book big enough to hold a galaxy of records ended up in the creation of new stars as they collapsed in on themselves. Determined somehow to make a profit from all this, as any self respecting capitalist monster should do, they converted them into habitable solar systems and named them after sponsors. Anybody wishing to stay in any of these places, i.e. Flox Detergent V, would have to pay the small fee of being blasted away by adverts every time they looked up at the sky.

Back to what Fred did; he was a restaurant connoisseur in a manner of speaking. Only he wanted to be somewhat original. Someone had already eaten at every restaurant in the galaxy, died not of indigestion but from his bank statement choking him on his bank manager's behalf. No, Fred wanted to travel the galaxy to taste the delicacies of every fast food joint there is. That way he could get his name in the book, not get bored, go to a rave every now and again, and not break the bank all at the same time. Perfect.

He waved at a couple of brightly coloured fruits dangling lightly from a branch. Slowly, gracefully, almost as if it waded through the very essence of space/time, the branch both stayed as it was, swooped in front of Fred, and was always already there in front of him. Display screens appeared inside the broad fruits without the fruits themselves being hollow or transparent. Fred enjoyed this a lot. The whole bridge system was personalised to his taste.

On one fruit, like a crazed melon, was a tactical display of his ship and the hovering labels of the four closest and one destination star system. On another, shaped like a larger than usual banana, a database of all the fast food joints he had been to and yet to get to.

He poked at the banana to wade through the names and general addresses of the restaurants.

D.

The banana loaded an incomprehensibly cluttered list. He was told the name of the next fast food joint but couldn't find it. A bit more wading, some squinting, a bit of poking... nope not under D.

Ah, revelation. M.

There you go; McDonalds. He pointed to it and some text appeared hovering next to his finger which had this to say:

McDonalds. To find one, simply land somewhere and your next to one. For the more daring, wrap a towel round your head, obscuring vision, and set the ship to cruise in the general direction of the planet. Step off the ship just before you hear a big thud and you'll be outside a McDonalds. Earth, ZZPluralZAlpha.

Fred ate the database console.

* * *

(1) The Interior Decorator Lexicon's equivalent to a blank Scrabble tile.

(2) Sane a. Of sound mind, not mad; (of views) moderate, sensible. Its hard to pin this word down to an actual intensity of meaning and other words like moderate or sensible just don't help. The galactic census once tried taking the average sanity of everyone in the galaxy and came to the conclusion that, to most people, howling abuse and hurling rocks at a killer troll from Gargleflurt V was a moderate and sensible past time.


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

Like a fast-food junkie vulture circling in the sky eyeing a place to park next to the conveniently fast dying heat-stroked buffalo, the driver of a green Rover behind Ziggy seized his opportunity to jump the pecking order and take his place next to the man in the box.

His limbs tingled and his lethargy evaporated as he sat breathing heavily, eyes wide. That was good; he'd prefer that any day over a smack on the head no matter how well calculated. After gathering his thoughts, and a fresh supply of adrenaline, he saw the green Rover in his rear-view mirror and hunter-gatherer instincts immediately kicked and bashed their way in.

It was 8.17am.

He was now seventeen minutes late for a potentially life changing audition.

Not a being in this or any other universe would dare take away his Egg McMuffin breakfast and live to tell the tale. The jerk in the green Rover 75 was going to have to choose between backing up or getting his car mangled by a pink Golf Gti. And when it comes to playing the time honoured game of 'chicken,' the driver of the pink Golf Gti will always win; not because he's got balls for driving such a car in a game of chicken but because he won't give a fetid pair of dingoes' kidney's what happens to it since the opponent will always have the car actually worth keeping.

While panic ensues and ancient quarrels are re-enacted at this particular McDonalds, the chronicler wishes to eloquently draw attention away to the reader's untied shoe-laces (1.)

Ziggy laboriously wound the window down.

'Good morning!'

He gave the man in the box his best cold stare, 'McMuffin Meal, Coffee – black.'

'What drink would you like with that, sir?'

Ziggy persevered; he could almost but not quite comprehend the man in the box's complete non ability to think beyond his abode, 'Coffee. Black.'

'Would you like anything else, sir?'

All this malarky at an unstudently hour made him yearn for something slightly healthier, 'Can I have a banana split sundae?'

'Sorry... all out.'

'Banana McSundae?'

'Certainly, anything else?'

This at least brought a smile back on Ziggy's face – a manic smile but a smile none the less, 'No thank you.' He twitched.

'Is that to go?'

The smile vanished and his eyelids became heavy. He tried making sure that he was actually in the drive through and not parked inside in the restaurant in his car. Finding that he was still sane and all was right with the world he still couldn't make sense of the incredible stupidity exhibited by this man. This worried him and he looked over his shoulder and quickly turned back before he made eye contact with the Rover man again. That wasn't pleasant the first time round.

'To go, hopefully.'

'That'll be three ninety-nine.'

* * *

(1) If shoe laces are tied or non-existent then reading this footnote will do. 


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

Her mind was skiing down pristine alpine slopes while her body sat at a table in a God forsaken fast food joint. The body envied the mind's ability to bog off on a holiday whenever it pleased but it consoled itself in the fact that sometimes the body had a heck of a lot more fun. It was a dull grey morning and the diffuse lighting gave everything a gritty moss covered wet look. It was one of those days that didn't belong to a season. It didn't have the vibrant colours and crispness of autumn, neither did it have the freshness and anticipation of glorious snow of a decent winter. The other seasons hardly exist in Manchester so this day belonged to misery.

She had the professional classy look of a young, hip, television fashion stylist. But she was a hair dresser in a small family business in Ashton. It was six months to the day that she had been working for her uncle and lately she had been getting very frustrated by everything and everyone. She was, however, driven by a ferocious ambition to be a famous fashion stylist so it won't be like this for much longer. A couple of years in college studying the scientific art of fashion design and she would soon make a name for herself and get away from it all to a life of glamour, beauty and lots of money.

She sat staring at the cream swirling in her coffee and the fractal eddies rising through the steam. Her eyes reflected the galaxy in her cup yet for a long time she didn't even focus on it. Soon, as time passed, the steam etherealised and her coffee transformed into the colour of her skin.

The mind came screaming back from enjoying an exotic cocktail in the Hotel Eiger in Mürren and jumped her into full consciousness. Back were the screamming children, the people scoffing food noisily and the heavy grey world. She checked her watch. It was eight seventeen and she felt comfortable with it.


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

Ziggy was an intelligent man. He was also very broad minded. He liked to have fun, especially with his friends. But what he wasn't, was a patient man. He was the kind of guy who didn't like hanging about one place too long and seeing the same sort of things too much. Hell, he couldn't even stand repetitive floral wallpapering. So, the fact that everything this grey morning seemed to have been happening around the McDonalds was starting to get up his nose. In short, he wanted something big to happen.

So, in a strange sort of way, he was quite pleased when on his way out an unidentified falling object came screaming down from the sky, in flames, and embedded itself into the ground just after making a short pit stop through the hood of his car. Not only did it mean that something interesting had just happened but it meant that he could replace his car without having to double back on the point he tried to make when he first bought it, thus saving face. He loved it when things worked out this well.

He got out and noticed a host of startled faces staring at him and his personal disaster area. A young woman, who had been nearby and was now considerably concerned, approached cautiously. They seem nice, he thought, eyeing them in multiples of four.

Dizzily, he walked round the front of the car only to find that there wasn't really a front left and that he had just fallen into the small crater which had replaced it.

As he slid over the dust and concrete rubble his mind switched strategies. His ethereal self simply began to ignore, on the whole, everything going on outside. He began to feel as if he could take on anything in his stride as the dopamine levels in his brain surged. So what? He missed his chance of being in a Ridley Scott movie. Never liked Alien anyway. He had to play chicken with a man in a decent car in a fast food resaurant drive through. He nearly got his head sent through the ground by a meteor and he's just fallen in the crater. So what? Happens all the time. He passed out.

Stress can lead to some odd side effects for some. It affects different people in different ways just like it affects materials differently in the scientific field of plasticity. If you keep applying greater and greater stress onto say, a tea cup, it would display behaviour unique to the material it is made of before, inevitably, going insane. Ziggy is a ceramic tea cup. He can stand up to a surprising stress load before cracking up and spilling his Earl Grey everywhere.

She slapped him again, 'Wake up! Are you okay?'

He opened his eyes. It was the nice woman, she had come to see this crazy man lie in a ditch. He focused.

Oh God, she's hot. Oh God, say something funny or cool or a one liner before dying dramatically. He passed out again.


End file.
